In the session of 1655-56, the penalty of twenty pounds of tobacco for each night, imposed upon any person who gave entertainment or employment to an absconding servant, was increased to sixty pounds for every twenty-four hours. The letter “R” deeply burnt into the cheek, forehead, or shoulder not being found a sufficient mark of degradation, the right was granted to the master to keep the hair of the runaway cropped close to his ears, which would lead to his detection as soon as he escaped from the plantation to which he belonged.[1]
The pursuit of a runaway seems to have been generally made by hue and cry. It was required that this should be passed from the house of one county commissioner to that of another, under a heavy penalty for neglect.[2] This method proving unsatisfactory, an additional regulation was adopted in 1663, by the terms of which, at the request of a master whose servant had fled, the justices of the peace were commanded to issue their warrants directing the impressment of men and boats to take part in the pursuit, and the cost thus entailed was to be included in the regular county levies.[3] The enactment of such a law indicates that the public sentiment of the Colony regarded the loss of a laborer by flight as common to the whole community, and therefore to be made good out of the public funds.
As numerous runaways were able to escape from the country by means of ships engaged in carrying freight to the Dutch Colony, provision was made for their return by a standing request to the Governor of that Colony to send all absconding servants back by the first vessel which might sail to the part of Virginia from which they had fled.[4] When a person was returned under these circum-
